Typesetting quotations

When it comes to quotations and quotation marks each language has its own symbols and rules. For this reason several LaTeX packages have been created to assist in typesetting quotations either in-line, in display mode or at the beginning of each chapter. It's important to remark that even if you are typing quotes on English there are different quotation marks used in English (UK) and English (US). There are plenty of quotation marks and almost each language has own features with them (see the reference guide).

Contents

dirtytalk is a very small LaTeX package with only one available command: \say, shown in the next example:

\documentclass{article}\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}\usepackage{dirtytalk}\begin{document}\section{Introduction}
Typing quotations with this package is quite easy:
\say{Here, a quotation is written and even some \say{nested} quotations
are possible}\end{document}

The package is loaded by putting in the preamble:

\usepackage{dirtytalk}

Supports one nested quotation and have options to redefine the quotes glyphs. For instance, in a document in French the next code should work

The csquotes package provides advanced facilities for in-line and display quotations. Supports a wide-range of commands, environments and user-definable quotes. Quotes can be automatically adjusted to the current language by means of the babel or polyglossia packages. This package is suitable for documents with complex quotation requirements, therefore it has a vast variety of commands to insert in-line quotes, quotes with sources, block-quotes with the support of changing language.

Below is an example of the csquotes package working with babel in a document in Spanish to automatically load the proper quotation glyphs (gillemets) in this language.

Some authors like to write quotations at the beginning of a chapter, these quotations are known as epigraphs. The epigraph package provides a vast set of options to typeset the epigraphs and epigraphs lists.

There's another package to typeset epigraphs or quotations at the beginning of each chapter, fancychapters. This package provides a new command to define chapter titles:

\documentstyle[fancychapters]{report}\begin{document}\Chapter{
``Parents of young organic life forms should be warned, that
towels can be harmful, if swallowed in large quantities.''
\\[5pt]\rightline{{\rm --- Douglas Adams}}}[No More]{Building No More Operating Systems}

For this package to work, the first line in the document must be

\documentstyle[fancychapters]{report}

The type book can also be set instead of report.

The command \Chapter takes two parameters inside braces. The first one is the quote to by printed on top of the title, the second one is the chapter title. There's and additional optional parameter inside brackets that corresponds to the optional parameter of the regular \chapter command.

This package only works on books and reports. Even though the package works fine and automatically computes the width and height of the quotation and the chapter title, it seems that it's not longer maintained.

The package quotechap is somehow similar to fancychapters but more complex. It redefines the commands chapter and its starred version to reformat them, you can even change the colour of the chapter number with this package. Also, provides a special environment to typeset quotations and the corresponding authors.

\documentclass{book}\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}\usepackage{quotchap}\begin{document}\begin{savequote}[45mm]
---When shall we three meet again
in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
---When the hurlyburly’s done,
when the battle’s lost and won.
\qauthor{Shakespeare, Macbeth}
Cookies! Give me some cookies!
\qauthor{Cookie Monster}\end{savequote}\chapter{Classic Sesame Street}\end{document}

The package is imported by the command

\usepackage{quotchap}

then, inside the environment savequote the quotes are typed. The parameter inside brackets, 45mm, sets the width of the quotation area. After each quote the command \qauthor{} is used to typeset and format the author's name.